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Over a year ago, Kanye West said that his then-unreleased 12th studio album Bully felt like his personal version of Lauryn Hill’s seminal 1998 record The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.
“Yeah, because you lean on a bar that brings somebody down — that was always rap,” Yeezy told Justin Laboy on The Download podcast in February 2025. “This is more the way I remember Lauryn Hill[‘s] album, the way I remember Miseducation. I feel it is my Miseducation. It is my Gnarls Barkley album. Because Bully has a title and connotation that a lot of people are anti-bully. But I’m just hyper-next-level frequency right now.”
West’s words came full circle during his second comeback concert at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif. on Friday, April 3. Midway through the sold-out show at the 70,000-capacity venue, the rapper-producer now known as Ye brought out the one and only Ms. Hill, who materialized amid a cloud of smoke in a billowing dress. As the duo stood atop the orb-shaped stage mirroring Earth, the crowd swelled with cheers as they dived into a stunning performance of “All Falls Down.”
Ye gave a rare smile throughout the performance. Ye, a longtime fan of Hill, sampled her live album MTV Unplugged No. 2.0 cut “Mystery of Iniquity” on his Grammy-nominated 2004 single, “All Falls Down.” At the time, he couldn’t clear the original sample for the official release of the track and enlisted Syleena Johnson to re-sing the portions that featured on The College Dropout version.
Then, on Friday night, after Hill delivered a passionate rendition of “Doo Wop (That Thing)” that transitioned into Ye’s “Believe What I Say” (which sampled the song from her debut LP), Ye surprised everyone by disappearing through a trapdoor to give Ms. Hill the floor.
Ms. Hill wasn’t solo for long, however, and swiftly announced, “I brought some people with me.” Soon, her sons Zion Marley and YG Marley joined her. YG and Hill sang “Praise Jah in the Moonlight,” his 2023 debut single he co-wrote with his mother.
While Ms. Hill appearing alongside Ye sent sent shockwaves both throughout the packed audience at SoFi and online (the event was livestreamed on YouTube), Ye brought out more guests for back-to-back memorable moments. Earlier in the night, Travis Scott joined him, appearing in a mask and wearing a shirt emblazoned with the words “Unsane.” The duo performed their collab track “Father,” which dropped on March 28 as the lead single from Bully. Scott also delivered a performance of Utopia‘s hit track “Fein.”
Ye followed it up with CeeLo Green, who performed the album’s title track. Ye’s daughter, North, who also made an appearance on day one, showed up for a second round to rap “Bless Me” and “Piercing on My Hand.” In another special moment, Ye invited André Troutman to perform their song, “All the Love.”
Like night one in Los Angeles, the usually unfiltered artist offered no commentary on the controversy and backlash surrounding him after years of antisemitic rhetoric, mental health struggles, and his public apology in a Wall Street Journal ad this past January for his antisemitic outbursts.
Like the previous night, Ye closed with “Runaway” from his 2010 offering My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. It was a track — which Ye once said could be “about my relationship with society or my relationship with the fans or anyone who I let down or people who had to defend me that really love me” — that was a poignant note to end on.
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